Mr. Reindeer wrote:She also oddly says the “European version” of the Pilot was released direct to video in the UK five months before the Pilot aired on ABC. Can anyone definitively confirm or refute this? I’ve never heard this before, and I’m fairly certain the “direct to video movie” market barely existed in 1989. I’ve always been curious exactly when the “European edit” became available, and whether fans became aware of the idea of Bob as the killer before it was officially hinted/revealed in TSDoLP and Episode 8 as a result of the extended Pilot.

Mr. Reindeer wrote:She also oddly says the “European version” of the Pilot was released direct to video in the UK five months before the Pilot aired on ABC. Can anyone definitively confirm or refute this? I’ve never heard this before, and I’m fairly certain the “direct to video movie” market barely existed in 1989. I’ve always been curious exactly when the “European edit” became available, and whether fans became aware of the idea of Bob as the killer before it was officially hinted/revealed in TSDoLP and Episode 8 as a result of the extended Pilot.

DKL reveals that in the mid-‘90s, he was trying to make a film about the storied life of blues great Robert Johnson. I found it interesting that he was at one point planning a movie with a predominantly black cast, after the conversation MTWentz had in another thread about race in DKL’s work.

(MT will also be insterested to learn that DKL’s boat was named the Little Indian.)

One thing the book does clear up a bit is the involvement of screenwriter Joyce Eliason in the Mulholland Drive pilot (something myself, LostInTheMovies, claaa7, sylvia_north and others have wondered about). Neal Edelstein (who produced the film for DKL’s Picture Factory/Asymmetrical) says that Tony Krantz (who came on board as producer for Disney/ABC’s partner Imagine Entertainment) insisted that DKL have a cowriter to “guide” the writing process. This is in character for Krantz, who is famously responsible for first uniting Lynch and Frost, and who is quoted elsewhere in the book saying that Lynch’s work could not exist on TV without the structure Frost brought to the table. According to Edelstein, however, DKL was insistent on writing Mulholland Drive by himself, and did just that after a few good-faith meetings with Eliason. Apparently almost none of her ideas made it onscreen, which makes sense. The WGA is infamous for favoring the first writers hired to a project when it comes to crediting, even when that writer’s contribution to the final product is nonexistent. The fact that the WGA allowed Eliason’s credit to be left off the film likely means she had zero real input. (DKL’s version: “Tony always wanted me to write with someone else—I don’t know why—but I wrote Mulholland Drive on my own [...]”)

Not sure if this is common knowledge, but I just learned from the book that Lynch regular Scott Coffey (Jack Rabbit, Trick in TP:TR) is the son of DKL’s late, beloved personal assistant Gaye Pope. I’d always wondered how he got small roles in so many Lynch films! I remember at some point someone on these boards speculated it was solely because DKL was amused by his last name.

Mr. Reindeer wrote:One thing the book does clear up a bit is the involvement of screenwriter Joyce Eliason in the Mulholland Drive pilot (something myself, LostInTheMovies, claaa7, sylvia_north and others have wondered about). Neal Edelstein (who produced the film for DKL’s Picture Factory/Asymmetrical) says that Tony Krantz (who came on board as producer for Disney/ABC’s partner Imagine Entertainment) insisted that DKL have a cowriter to “guide” the writing process. This is in character for Krantz, who is famously responsible for first uniting Lynch and Frost, and who is quoted elsewhere in the book saying that Lynch’s work could not exist on TV without the structure Frost brought to the table. According to Edelstein, however, DKL was insistent on writing Mulholland Drive by himself, and did just that after a few good-faith meetings with Eliason. Apparently almost none of her ideas made it onscreen, which makes sense. The WGA is infamous for favoring the first writers hired to a project when it comes to crediting, even when that writer’s contribution to the final product is nonexistent. The fact that the WGA allowed Eliason’s credit to be left off the film likely means she had zero real input. (DKL’s version: “Tony always wanted me to write with someone else—I don’t know why—but I wrote Mulholland Drive on my own [...]”)

Thanks, Mr Reindeer. I haven't read Room To Dream yet, but this is something that I'd often wondered about. In all honesty, it wasn't something I was expecting Room To Dream to clarify.

If you have the chance, make sure to listen to the audiobook too. All of the Kristine McKenna sections are basically verbatim, but Lynch tells some stories that aren’t in the book and some of the stories in the book get more elaboration and sometimes don’t exactly match up with the written recollection. It’s really interesting and makes both very worth the investment if you like Lynch.

bowisneski wrote:If you have the chance, make sure to listen to the audiobook too. All of the Kristine McKenna sections are basically verbatim, but Lynch tells some stories that aren’t in the book and some of the stories in the book get more elaboration and sometimes don’t exactly match up with the written recollection. It’s really interesting and makes both very worth the investment if you like Lynch.

Wow, interesting. I wonder what the writing process was. I wonder if the audiobook reflects an earlier draft before his assistants and/or McKenna transcribed and edited his portions? I’ll have to check it out. Does he narrate the whole book or just his “autobiography” chapters?

bowisneski wrote:If you have the chance, make sure to listen to the audiobook too. All of the Kristine McKenna sections are basically verbatim, but Lynch tells some stories that aren’t in the book and some of the stories in the book get more elaboration and sometimes don’t exactly match up with the written recollection. It’s really interesting and makes both very worth the investment if you like Lynch.

Wow, interesting. I wonder what the writing process was. I wonder if the audiobook reflects an earlier draft before his assistants and/or McKenna transcribed and edited his portions? I’ll have to check it out. Does he narrate the whole book or just his “autobiography” chapters?

That’s a good question.

And just his halves of the chapter, but they also seem longer than his written portions. Though that may just be a misperception.

It’s interesting that DKL seems not to have a great opinion of David Cronenberg. I think many of us might have pegged Cronenberg as about as close to a kindred spirit as DKL might have in semi-mainstream Hollywood, but he rather dismissively implies that The Straight Story did not win any awards at Cannes because Cronenberg was head of the jury and “probably thought it was total bullshit.”

Another piece of either misinformation or sloppy drafting: the book implies that the entire Poland shoot for IE occurred in 2006, but this is impossible, since one of the actors playing the old men in the séance scene died in April 2004!

Dern: “I remember hearing Philip Seymour Hoffman talking about why [INLAND EMPIRE] scared him, and what made him uncomfortable, and his effort to understand it—listening to him talk about INLAND EMPIRE was magnificent.”